UTEP Journal article flips the classroom in Nursing Education
Franchesca Nuñez, Ph.D., assistant professor at The University of Texas at El Paso’s School of Nursing, is the first author on a journal article that examines the flipped classroom teaching model to enhance student engagement, learning outcomes in nursing education, and application challenges.
A flipped classroom reverses the traditional learning environment by having students study lesson content before class and apply the content to active learning activities while in class.
Nuñez co-authored the paper “It Takes More Than One Somersault to Flip a Classroom” with Diane B. Monsivais, Ph.D., professor and interim associate dean for graduate nursing education at UTEP.
The paper was recently published in Nurse Educator, a peer-reviewed journal for nurse educators and nursing school faculty and administrators.
Nuñez and Monsivais described the challenges faced by students and faculty in transitioning medical-surgical and pathophysiology courses in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program from a traditional classroom model of teaching to a flipped classroom approach.
They also presented solutions to overcome those challenges such as developing a course guide to orient students to the flipped classroom model, prioritizing pre-class activities for students, assessing students’ abilities to view online video recordings outside of class, and administering weekly in-class quizzes as an incentive for students to complete pre-class activities.
“Nursing is an applied science and the flipped classroom method provides students more opportunities to apply meaning to new information obtained via pre-class content, practice decision-making, and make judgments about patient outcomes while in-class,” Nuñez said.
“Being aware of common challenges faced during the implementation of the flipped model and corresponding solutions may ease the transition to this form of teaching/learning method.”